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Science & Technology

The US just elected 9 new scientists to Congress, including an ocean expert, a nurse, and a biochemist

November 08, 2018

The faces of Capitol Hill are changing. When the 116th Congress heads to Washington in January, there will be a record number of women in the ranks -- at least 123, according to the news website Axios, including the first Muslim women, the first Somali-American, and the first Native American women. There will be more scientists too.

China's Beating the US to Market on Combat Drones, By Copying US Technology

November 07, 2018

The mockup of China’s CH-7 combat drone unveiled at Zhuhai Airshow this week looks a lot like one the U.S. Navy was developing -- until it dropped the project, allowing China to position itself to beat the U.S. and other allies in fielding a long-range, high-altitude combat drone. That’s despite the fact that--in the words of one expert—the United States had a “ten-year head start.”

How to Lock Down What Websites Can Access on Your Computer

November 07, 2018

As websites and web apps have grown in complexity, so have their demands: They want access to your webcam to make video calls, they want to know where in the world you are to serve up local information, and so on. In fact, websites now ask for almost as many permissions as the apps on your phone do, though you might not be as familiar with how to manage them. We'll show you how.

Physicists measured Earth’s mass using neutrinos for the first time

November 07, 2018

Puny particles have given scientists a glimpse inside the Earth. For the first time, physicists have measured the planet’s mass using neutrinos, minuscule subatomic particles that can pass straight through the entire planet. Researchers also used the particles to probe the Earth’s innards, studying how the planet’s density varies from crust to core.

NASA Will Use ISS Supercomputer for Science Experiments

November 06, 2018

While the International Space Station (ISS) is a technological marvel, it has not traditionally had a lot of onboard processing capacity. That changed last year when NASA delivered a supercomputer to the station. It was only there for a test run, but now the agency plans to use it for processing data and running experiments. Eventually, NASA and manufacturer HP hope to understand why some parts of the computer work well in orbit and others don’t.

The inventor of the web says the internet is broken - but he has a plan to fix it

November 06, 2018

Speaking to CNBC at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon Monday, Berners-Lee said the web is "at a tipping point" as it faces threats like market concentration, data breaches and so-called "fake news." "For a long time, 20 years, I thought all I had to do was keep it, just keep it free and open and people will do wonderful things," Berners-Lee told CNBC's Karen Tso. "Then in fact if you look and talk to people on the street now there's been a big change. I think this has been been a tipping point."

For more than a year, few details about the selection process for Amazon’s second North American headquarters — beyond the tech giant’s own disclosures — saw the light of day. But with Amazon’s self-imposed end-of-year deadline approaching, reports are beginning to trickle out about which contenders have the best shot to land the vaunted economic development prize.

How two AI superpowers - the U.S. and China - battle for supremacy in the field

November 05, 2018

Silicon Valley was once able to write off Chinese tech companies as mere copycats. The big American players, from Twitter to Facebook to Google, all had a Chinese impersonator. But the rise of hugely successful Chinese messaging apps like WeChat -- not to mention all the U.S. tech companies that failed in China -- now make clear that the nation’s tech companies should not be underestimated.

Who will get to Mars first? Oddsmakers favor SpaceX and Blue Origin over NASA

November 05, 2018

David Strauss, an analyst and oddsmaker at MyBookie, says NASA is the underdog and Musk is the favorite. “Bezos may have the discipline, but Musk has the infrastructure and just the right amount of craziness to make a successful mission happen,” he said today in a news release. “The days of government organizations staging trips to another planet are behind us. I would be surprised if NASA truly makes it back to the moon.”

Hubble is back at work after breakdown

November 04, 2018

Hubble went into safe mode when one of its three working gyroscopes failed, leaving mission managers with a weighty challenge: They could try getting a glitchy gyro working again, bringing the telescope’s pointing system back to its normal three-gyro mode. Otherwise, they would have to go to a one-gyro procedure for pointing at observational targets, and keep the second gyro in reserve.

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